


A Widening Gyre.

by Archamasse



Category: Lost Girl
Genre: AU, Bo/Lauren (historic), Dark Bo, F/F, Post-Apocalypse, Ysabeau, doccubus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-15
Updated: 2014-12-18
Packaged: 2018-03-01 13:23:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 9,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2774579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Archamasse/pseuds/Archamasse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kenzi comes to the tyrannical Ysabeau for one last showdown.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> All reviews are appreciated. If you like it please pass it on.
> 
> I'm not quite satisfied with how this turned out, but it's going no further and I didn't want to leave it rotting on my hard drive. 
> 
> Thank you for reading.

“You were supposed to be here, Kenz.”

Ysabeau’s eyes blazed a constant, furious blue, but her voice was flat. She looked bored.

Kenzi, on the other hand, was freaked the hell out. Whatever she might have been prepared to find here, she’d never expected to find Ysabeau just… sitting, _waiting_ for her.

“You were supposed to be here with me, and so was she.”

She gestured vaguely at the two other thrones, flanking her on either side. One had been long abandoned; the other had never even been occupied.

“All three of us, all the way, against the world if it came down to it. That was how it was _supposed_ to be. This isn’t right, even you have to feel it.”

 _She’d have killed me by now if she was going to,_ Kenzi reasoned, _so let’s see where this goes_. She waited until Ysabeau started speaking again to risk another, careful step forward.

“This… this isn’t how it’s _meant_ to be” she said grimly, and even after all that had happened, Kenzi was shocked at the weight of a voice she expected to feel familiar. It rankled, in a petty way - the woman had held a seat of absolute power for over a decade, at an untold cost to millions of people, and didn’t even seem to enjoy it.

It was almost pathetic. But she could not, and would not, pity a thing like Ysabeau.

This creature was _not_ her old friend, and she was long past needing to remind herself about that. Maybe she’d been part of Bo, or maybe Bo was part of her, but who knew or cared now. Either way, she was something very separate and apart from the sister she’d once loved and adored. _This_ woman was a tyrant, one who had done and permitted _terrible_ things. _This_ woman needed to be put down, and Kenzi hadn’t a single doubt about it.

Ysabeau raised an eyebrow, as if responding to that very thought.

“You’re here to put me out of my misery Kenz, that’s the plan?”

Kenzi shuddered, feeling just how small and human she was under that gaze. By now it probably didn’t matter how much Ysabeau could read from her, but it was _still_ deeply unsettling to see it at work.

“Here to _stop_ you. And that means destroying you, so yeah guess I’ll do that.”

 “Destroy me… “ Ysabeau gave a dry laugh, and shook her head. “You don’t think you’re fashionably late to that party, Kenz? Shit, even if you had a hope in hell, killing me wouldn’t fix anything, don’t you get it? I keep trying to tell you, this is way past fixing.”

She sat slouched in her throne, unimpressed and apathetic, and still those blazing eyes never seemed to blink or dim. In the low light, the eerie blue glimmered on the silver chain around her neck, and the simple silver rings hanging from it. By accident or intention, the two silver bands settled right against her scar, the only flaw on her body. It was an incongruously ugly thing, and maybe the most famous scar in the world - the ragged fingerprint of a failed kill shot, a distinctive, messy exit wound just right of centre. The would-be assassin had sent his bullet straight through her chest, with agonising but survivable results for Bo herself. What a world they might have had if it hadn’t carried on just those fatal few inches further.

“I’m relieved though, I won’t lie,” she went on absently. “I thought maybe you were going to make a touching appeal to the sweet old Polyanna Bo you used to know or some shit.”

She leaned forward just a little to consider the girl – her subject – thoughtfully.

 “Nah,” she said. “You’re a smart one, Kenz. You know _she’s_ already dead, don’t you? _That_  Bo doesn’t live here no more. Where are the guys though, by the way? I know you didn’t manage to make it up to visit me without a chaperone or three.”

Kenzi scowled.

“I asked ‘em to hold the elevator for me. You know how chivalrous those dudes are.”

Ysabeau laughed again, and there wasn’t a trace of warmth anywhere in the sound at all. Kenzi took another inch forward; paused, and then risked another.

She wasn’t being wholly glib though. Her fae comrades _had_ stayed in the elevator lobby to hold off any unaccounted-for guards who might follow them up. Force was no advantage against Ysabeau, and Kenzi – having once lived here – could get past the threshold wards with the least of a toll on their meagre bag of charms and tricks.

She expected it to be far harder to convince them to let her go in alone; in truth, their chances were already so slim that to their minds, it made scarce difference either way. And they couldn’t deny Kenzi’s plea for some kind of a settling with her former friend. Nobody actually expected to leave this building alive; it had been a small miracle just to get this far, so what did it matter? They had all made their goodbyes there and then for the last time, and parted ways.

These floors were the Ysabeau’s personal chambers, and people did not come here uninvited. The building had been a bank headquarters originally, before Ysabeau – well, still Bo at the time – chose it as her own. She’d had the already-considerable security measures reinforced, and then made a home here, in the vast upper floors.  It had become her fortress and her palace, visible from much of Toronto.

Fortress or not, it did tug at Kenzi’s heart to see the state of a place now. It had been far too brief a golden age, but she, Bo, and Lauren had been happy here for a while. One freaky fucked up little royal court with the whole, glorious future ahead of them; destined to set the world to rights. That was the plan, that was how it was _supposed_ to be, until it had all gone wrong.

Her familiarity with the place had indeed proved an advantage, and they’d been astonished to discover that the layout, and even some of the access codes, had remained the same all these years. Once though, she’d been able to laugh here with her friend; looking around now, that seemed unimaginable. Kenzi remembered these rooms being so much brighter, more comfortable, warmer, more alive than they were now, back when the place was home to something.

At first, she’d thought her imagination might have been colouring her vision, but it wasn’t – everything had been allowed to fallow and wither. The rich red carpet couching the thrones was dull; dust lay on extravagant furniture, and struggling lightbulbs blinked on elegant chandeliers. It was as though Ysabeau had let the building itself die around her, let it come to reflect the lifelessness in her own soul.

“You know, I really don’t remember this sense of oppressive gloom when I lived here. Did you have that done recently?”

Ysabeau smiled indulgently and it looked like a carnivore baring its teeth.

“Well you haven’t lived here for a while. I guess the place missed your influence,” she drawled casually, gesturing at the room. “ _I_ sure have, you know.”

Kenzi paused.

“I lived here with Bo. Not you. I lived here with Bo, and you’re _not_ her.”

Ysabeau’s gaze narrowed to a sharpened point. Every nerve in Kenzi’s body screamed at her to shut up now, to back down, to save herself, but she couldn’t. There was no going back now.

“Bo’s dead,” she said, all bravado, feeling her throat start to dry up. “I think she died right along with Lauren.”

The veneer of indifference disappeared in a split second and somehow she already had Kenzi by the throat. The air crackled with static electricity and somewhere distant, Kenzi heard a sound of splintering glass.

“Lauren was _killed_. Lauren was killed because _your_ Bo, the one you’re so goddamn fond of, was too _weak_  to stop it happening”

Her eyes were terrifying up close, fucking terrifying. Kenzi gagged and clawed for her life, but Ysabeau didn’t even twitch.

“No, I’m not her Kenzi. I’m not _your_ Bo, not even a trace of her. _I’m_ the Queen.”

“Some… Queen… you are” Kenzi managed.  “Your whole empires’s tearing itself apart…f’you didn’t… notice.”

Ysabeau laughed right into her face.

“Oh sweetie, I know, I made _sure_ of it.” She snarled. “I’ll teach every one of them to grieve, and it won’t be half enough. I hope they fucking eat each other out there. We were going to give them a future together! But they didn't want that. They ruined everything. _They_ poisoned it all, so this is their world instead.”

“Lauren… wouldn’t have wanted this.”

“Well she’s _dead,_  Kenzi, so what difference does that make to us now?”

She released the smaller girl and straightened up regally in an instant. Kenzi collapsed into a heap, coughing and spluttering for breath.

“This isn’t how it was supposed to be. I keep telling you. But they sent assassins into my home to find a monster, and here I am. I’m the Queen they made, and this is the future they built for themselves.”

Kenzi crawled painfully away from Ysabeau and her rambling, clutching her throat theatrically. With her free hand, she fumbled in her jacket for her precious secret weapon. She grasped it, and said a silent prayer, to every capital lettered deity she could think of, that this crazy bullshit might work.


	2. Chapter 2

All this magic mojo shit seemed _almost_ reasonable in the planning, but now she was actually doing it, it really did feel insane. She’d always known it was crazy to pin all hopes on something this ridiculous, but only now could she see _how_ crazy. 

The big ace up their sleeve, the Hail Mary, was a weird little wooden knife that was supposed to be magic. The strip of parchment wrapped around the handle sure looked the part, but the thing felt like a toy in her hand. This was the flimsy piece of - hopefully - magic fae junk that they were going to pin their shot on, and for all she knew it was carved from a damn door step.

The squirrelly little sage who’d given it to them had talked it up like some kind of Ysabeau kryptonite, but whether she was supposed to explode or melt or whatever the hell, he couldn't be drawn. Kenzi would have been dubious about the dude’s pitch anyway, but the fact that a _sage_ had managed to survive this long made her even more suspicious. Dyson and the guys though, vouched for him as legit, and if the guy wasn’t a plant, then…

If he’d made it this long, then maybe he really might have a line on something. Ysabeau’s hatred of prophets superceded any other.At first, she’d had them hunted down with a blind, immediate fury; then later, mounted a far more systematic kind of purge. Sages, oracles, soothsayers, anyone with any prescient ability, they’d all been pretty much wiped out in Ysabeau’s rages.

In most things, Ysabeau's thinking was incomprehensible, and her actions chaotic. Even when it came to rebels and dissenters, she was almost as likely to tolerate them or pit them against each other as she was to just crush them brutally. Her vendetta against precognitives though, was uniquely sustained. It was an unwavering campaign of extermination, probably been the single throughline of her reign. Her logic was perfectly clear – since some of the seers must have known about the impending assassination attempt, and none had warned her of it, she meant to destroy them all. And so she had.

It couldn't have been easy to round up people who can tell the future, but absolute power and infinite resources apparently came up trumps. Gradually, they’d all either turned up dead somewhere, as the girl Cassie had; or they’d been disappeared by Ysabeau’s goons, like Trick. Kenzi didn’t know what had become of those ones, but since the actual shooter had been killed almost instantly, her hunch was that the Queen had taken her sweet time with each of them instead. Probably somewhere in this tower, in fact.

What would it be like, she had often wondered, to know that was in store for you before it was inflicted? 

She really didn't want to think about that now. She tightened her grip on the wooden knife and swallowed a breath. 

Ysabeau was surveying the scene indifferently, distractedly straightening her dress. Apparently, this had been a brief and novel diversion, but she was already losing interest.

She sighed and strode to Kenzi’s huddled form to finish her off. She seized her by the hair and dragged her roughly onto her knees.

“I guess this is it then. I am sorry it all went this way though. It’s all a little anticlimactic, I feel like there should be last words or something. That seems cheesy to me, is that cheesy? You were always good with this stuff.”

Now or never, Kenzi thought. Now or goddamn never.

“Bo, if you’re still in there somewhere, I love you and I’m sorry.”

With a desperate effort, Kenzi cried out and thrust the knife at her as hard she could, hoping against hope to bury it in her heart.

Her stomach flipped when it met no resistance - Ysabeau was already out of its path, with impossible speed. Kenzi felt her steel trap grip take her again and hurl her to the floor with terrific force. She hit the ground like a ton of bricks and heard wood rattle hopelessly on the stone tiled floor.

Ysabeau tipped her head back and laughed.  A thick line of blood ran down her forearm and dripped onto the floor, and that was all.

“Well that’s a little more like it!” she roared. “Let’s try mine instead this time, what do you say?”

She laughed and tossed aside the skirting of her dress to draw her own - very real - dagger from the scabbard on her thigh. 

Kenzi’s vision swam. She looked to her own mock-weapon lying out of reach on the floor and despaired. As shitty as their stupid plan had been, she’d blown it.

“Yeah too bad. Love your moxy girl, I do, but come on. You came at the queen and missed. Let’s wrap this up.”

Kenzi knew she should _try_ to fight, or run, or something, but that wasn’t what was happening. Instead, no matter how hard she tried to focus, and react, her eyes drew only to the wooden knife on the floor. She had the vague impression that the weird little doodad was somehow more detailed than anything else in the room, more urgent than anything else, mattered more. The parchment around the handle had unravelled from the hilt a little, and she noticed for the first time a small silver symbol inlaid in the wood underneath. She recognised it from tattoos of boytoys past – it was a snake, biting its own tail, forming an endless cycle. Weird, she thought. Weird to have that there.

She heard Yseabeau’s steps approach, and she had no doubts about what that meant for her.

But it was just background - what she was _aware_ of was the knife. Drops of Ysabeau’s blood had soaked into the thin parchment, blotting out into shapes and spatters that looked almost like a pattern. Kenzi felt like she could have counted every fibre in the fabric, every spatter of bright fresh red blood, every splinter of the wood’s grain seated in place.

She should say something, or do something, anything – but nothing could tear her eyes off that knife. Her limbs were heavy, and the air was thick, and all the grim light of the vast room seemed to narrow on just that strip of cloth.

She felt Ysabeau seize her again, and drag her head roughly backwards to show her throat, and even _then,_ even waiting for the death blow, all she could see was that bit of wood and the white fabric wrapped around it.

Was she imagining it? How the drops of blood seemed to run out into deliberate trails? How the stains started to look like bad handwriting?

Ysabeau was saying something else off in the distance, but it didn’t feel like it mattered. No, she decided, she definitely wasn’t imagining it. Letters, words, whole phrases were forming themselves in little clusters from any point blood had splashed onto the ribbon. The _blood_ , she realised. She could have laughed. Of course it was the blood, it seemed so suddenly, absurdly obvious. This stuff always seemed to come back to blood. She was never meant to send a killing blow - she just had to draw Ysabeau’s _blood._

She felt the fine edge of Ysabeau’s knife meet her skin, and as it did she watched the red brown writing bleed right off the parchment onto the floor, indecipherable characters working outwards in a spiderweb, fading as quickly as they’d appeared.

This was it, she was going to die - but at least, whatever the hell the thing was supposed to do, it was working. That was something.

She saw Ysabeau’s arm tense to draw the blade across her throat and closed her eyes. She would have cackled in crazy relief if she could.

Suddenly, there was a catastrophic sound, from all around – as if something massive had fallen to the ground, all at once, in every single room around them. The few remaining lamps in the room flared and dimmed so quickly even more of them blew.

Ysabeau jerked away, and spun around to face the empty hall.

“…What?” she said, out into the hall and to no one. 

She released Kenzi into a heap on the floor, spluttering with relief.

“ _What?_ ” Ysabeau repeated, and took a few steps away, listening expectantly.

Only a hard silence came back.

Without warning, she broke into a sprint, clumsily kicking off thousand dollar heels as she went. She charged through heavy oak doors and into the corridors beyond.

Kenzi stared after her bewildered, still trying to catch her breath. The parchment on the knife crumbled away into ash, and whatever hold it had on her attention went with it. She would be badly hurting tomorrow – she might even have sprained her wrist when she hit the ground – but the pain seemed remote and unimportant. She didn’t even notice the papercut-fine sting where Ysabeau meant to cut her throat.

She took a moment to try to clear the fog in her head and regain her bearings.

Yeah, things were weird alright. For a start, the carpet she was pretty sure had been red a few minutes ago was suddenly blue for no good reason. And the people in that old timey painting over there, which she’d seen a thousand times, were now standing on opposite sides of the picture. A chair in the corner had fallen over because its legs were different lengths all of a sudden, and the heads of some dead flowers now poked crazily right through the ceramic of their own vase.

This, she thought solemnly, is some trippy shit.

She recalled, out of the blue, a forgotten episode when a cousin put her doll in a microwave.  It _looked_ pretty much okay when got it back, but the moving parts never really worked right again. Something had been changed just enough that it didn’t fit together right any more.

She thought about that doll now, as she looked at the chair that had fallen over, and wondered what the fuck kind of shit she might just have set in motion.

She staggered forward and tried again to focus. She’d definitely tried drugs a little like this, out of curiosity, a long time ago. It wasn’t just individual objects - the whole room, hell _everything_ , everything had a weird sense of unreality. She had the powerful and inexplicable impression - something that she would never have been able to articulate out loud - that some very important boundaries, some rules, had been suspended for a while. 

No, she thought, not “unreality”. That was the wrong word – this was all _real_ for sure, just a little less… solid than it should be. Like the ink on a page was still wet, like things were little bit more malleable than they were supposed to be. Not just physically but on some far more profound level she couldn’t grasp.

Yeah, it was _real_ , alright, but quite what that meant wasn’t so static anymore. Even the air itself seemed elastic in some strange new way she could never have imagined. Like heat shimmer on asphalt on a hot day – but… well, not. Nothing looked like it was shimmering, it just… _felt_ … like it was.

She glanced back to where the wooden knife had been. Having started whatever it was meant to start, it had crumbled away entirely to a little mound of black cinders. She was already sure it wasn't going to be the weirdest thing she'd see today.

She followed Ysabeau through those great oak doors, to see where they'd lead.


	3. Chapter 3

The first thing she noticed was that she’d definitely never seen this corridor before.

Kenzi had been on familiar ground as far as the throne hall, but back here, where nobody else ever came, Ysabeau really had been remodelling, in a daring new crazy ass style.

When Kenzi had last been here, the building back here was all fine lines and elegant geometry – now, there were new walls thrown up and cut through, and strange new additions or subtractions all over. Here, the wall was covered in rich coverings and tapestries – there, it was raw plaster. Artefacts and artworks that she knew were worth thousands or even millions of dollars were discarded in a corner, left stacked like cordwood or showcased in alcoves all of their own, with no particular pattern or consistency. Here, some old charcoal drawing had been mounted under purpose set lighting - there, a Caravaggio hung crookedly on a thick carpenter’s nail.

Kenzi had no choice but to follow this single corridor, and the telltale spatters of blood marking the way. She soon discovered it could double back on itself, break off into immediate dead ends, or wind round in hairpin bends for no reason. Somehow, this drove the extent of Ysabeau’s madness home best of all. This wasn’t just a strange conversation, or Disney villain posturing - the woman had warped the whole building around her unravelled mind.

She swore when she saw Ysabeau’s warren expanded out into more than one floor. Here, a set of beautifully crafted stone stairs – planted abruptly in the middle of another hallway – led her into a room full of fae artefacts which had been seemingly gathered in some kind of order for some grand purpose, then forgotten. A few corners later, another set of stairs – shabby and wooden this time – led her back up to the floor she’d come from. This place was crazy. It wasn’t exactly a maze, since the object didn’t seem to be to actually _lose_ her, but it made no damn sense anyway.

She thought she might have totally lost her bearings when she discovered a small parlour she knew after all. She didn’t recognise it immediately - the last time she’d been here, the door into it came from the other end of the room. _That_ doorway was now crudely bricked up, and _another_ punched brutishly through a wall of empty book shelves near it. The route brought her through other rooms she remembered from before, although in a path that was entirely unfamiliar. These rooms too had mostly been remixed in Ysabeau’s signature madcap style.

She started to doubt, and wonder if maybe she had missed some branching corridor, but more bright red drops on the floor confirmed Ysabeau had run through here for sure.

She knew, in a vague kind of way, that the effect of the knife – or the blood, or the spell, or whatever was happening - was damping her sense of disorientation. The craziness of the place’s geography didn’t seem as urgent as it should, not compared to that more profound, nagging sense of oddness, of something much more fundamental being less than watertight just now.

When she started to see ghost-like silhouettes out of the corner of her eye, it didn’t seem incredible either – she knew, in a dream-logic kind of way, that they weren’t real. They were insubstantial and indistinct, and they made no sounds. Impressions of what they were saying, moods, feelings, but no clear words. They were shades, scenery; memories that had bled into the walls and floors and ceilings off this building and now, under the effect of the spell, could bleed back out.

She turned another corner and saw one of them, an outline of herself, laughing silently on the phone to somebody. She moved through it and it disappeared. She saw the faintest impression of Bo – the old Bo, the Bo who hadn’t existed in a long time – stride past her, idly toying with something she knew was a fresh flower, before disappearing into one of the “new” walls.

She knew, distantly, that she should be freaking the fuck out, to see spectres of the living play out these ancient routines, but it didn’t. Instead, she just kept going through another ghostly Bo as it adjusted its outfit in a long-gone mirror, stifling the reflex to apologise.

Another set of wooden steps led into a large dark, echoing space, and now she was unnerved. This was a newer room, and there were only real shadows here. The only light source was from back down the stairwell, and from two clear sliding doors on the other end of the room. The faint light picked out stainless steel and glass surfaces everywhere. She knew, even before her eyes adjusted to the gloom, that she was in part of Lauren’s lab - or at least, what had been _meant_ to be Lauren’s lab.

Bo had it quietly installed on this floor while the other renovations were being done, unbeknownst to Lauren herself. It was a surprise. A gift, Bo’s big signal to Lauren that she was home at last here. Kenzi didn’t know if she’d found a chance to do the big reveal before the shooting. If she had, she suspected any celebrations made afterwards would have been quite private to the two.

Still, she imagined all too clearly Bo making a production of the unveiling – hiding Lauren’s eyes and leading her carefully through the doors, pleased with herself. She imagined Lauren geeking it up and giggling, and Bo’s delight at her reaction, and how they’d have fallen into each other’s arms, laughing into each other’s kisses.

The equipment she passed – and damn, it was bigger than she remembered, the lab – looked to be in perfect order, undisturbed by anything but dust and cobwebs. Probably none of it had been touched since Lauren died, assuming any of it had ever been used at all. It seemed like Ysabeau didn’t linger here for very long, whenever she scuttled through this part of her den.

The doors slid aside automatically for her approach, and she had to think again. This was a section branching off from the main space, a room that had definitely not been part of the original lab layout. It was an Ysabeau addition for sure, and another spatter of her blood signposted the way.

The chill suggested it was some kind of storage. She wasn’t immediately sure for what; the test tubes were massed in such enormous ranks that it took a second for her eyes to recognise them for what they were. The whole space was lined and filled and mazed by shelves and shelves of identical glass tubes of the same dark substance. She made her way past, and saw that they weren’t actually _filled_ \- they were empty, every one, the glass was just stained with the dried blood they’d held before.

She picked one up at random from a morbid curiosity - the label on it read “Fitzpatrick McCorrigan”.

As did the next. And the next and the next, and all the others she plucked from the rack. Trick had been thought long dead, but judging by the vast number of vials, he’d lived long enough to produce his own blood volume several times over. The grim discovery answered one question and raised another.

The lack of any _fresh_ vials probably didn’t bode well for him in the end, but if she made it through this, Kenzi vowed to find out what became of him. There were many floors in this building, and the mere mention of some of them was enough to hush a conversation. She would search, or have someone search, every one of them, for all the people they were missing.

Steeled and appalled, she left without glancing at the deeper, and more recent banks of empty vials; the far greater majority, all of which bore Ysabeau’s own name instead.

More glass doors hissed out of her way for her. She passed a mirror which was dripping out of its frame like mercury liquid, climbed up another fucking set of distinctly untrustworthy looking spiral stairs and now found herself in the library. This, too, had been something Bo had originally installed and appointed handsomely for her lover’s benefit. It was an impressive collection - she knew the stacks extended farther back than appearances suggested - but unlike the lab, this had seen a lot of use during Ysabeau’s time. It was disordered to some extent, but not in the same single minded derangement of some of the other places she’d seen – there was something frantic about the stacks of books here, or the little semi-circle of open texts laid out there. _Bo_ had assembled this collection for Lauren’s study and pleasure, but it had clearly been _Ysabeau_ who’d pored over it, feverishly searching for something.

The mixture of aged tomes – Lauren had a taste for Ancient Greece in particular, Kenzi seemed to remember - and modern medical texts gave way to something very different, and much more predictably unhinged in appearance. In what she remembered as a comfortable area of armchairs, reading desks and a couple of custom computer terminals, there were now hundreds and hundreds of used notebooks, writing pads, jotters, diaries - even stray pages of printer paper - everywhere. The chaotic, immediate pattern wasn’t that of a hoard or a kept collection – they had merely been used and discarded in frenzies. Notebooks and pages were scattered across every inch of flat surface, in rough little piles, as they’d been used, every inch of blank paper stained in written blood.

She could even see copies of other, printed books that had been overwritten, brown staining over black ink almost unintelligibly. This was where Trick’s blood had been spent - of course it was. Lauren’s name leaped out over and over again in scrawled text, and she realised exactly what Ysabeau had been trying to do.

Oh Bo, she thought pitifully, and loathed herself for that weakness.

 

The layer of paper was so dense in some places that she had to mind her footing, pages sliding over each other like wet leaves. She clambered over and between tumbling hills of notebooks and reporter pads on all fours, until she got to foot on thick carpet again. A spectre she guessed was Bo walked leisurely through her towards the stacks. At the next turn, one strip of carpet from the floor carried on right up the wall – by now she wasn’t sure if it was another symptom of the knife’s juju or just more of Ysabeau’s own native craziness on show.

The next room would be the big hall, unless Ysabeau had done something weird with it too.

She hadn't, as it happened. It had been a lush and comfortable space, and where the three of them had spent the most time hanging out during their brief stint here, before it had all gone to shit. The handsome wood and luxurious furnishings still seemed better suited to a castle than a high rise, and God only knew how exactly they’d installed a working stone fireplace right in the middle of it.

Like the throne room, everything was pretty much as she remembered it, but different all the same – there was no life here anymore. Little had physically changed, but she couldn’t imagine this room ever feeling warm or these colours ever looking bright.

She startled at movement, but it was just another shade from the spell. A shadow memory of Kenzi herself, it carried a bowl of cereal to the table and disappeared.

She’d spent a lot of happy, easy hours here with Bo, and even with Lauren. Her own rooms – which she once proudly described as the one she slept in, and the ones where her shoes lived – and Bo and Lauren’s chambers were diplomatically distinct, and quite distant from each other. This then was the space they most often shared. This was their version of a living room, where Kenzi draped her hangover over an armchair, or Bo would sneak away when her time wasn’t elsewhere demanded, or Lauren could be dragged to relax. They had purpose furnished dining rooms, several of them, but would eat here anyway – the three of them, and maybe their friends, on one end of the long table, close enough to steal each other’s food and pass each other drinks, talking through mouthfuls.

She remembered, quite vividly, the time she’d walked in on the other two here. She’d come home hours early from a disappointing party and inadvertently stumbled in on Bo and Lauren making love by the great fireplace. The carpet must have muted her footsteps, and the pair were evidently so distracted in each other they hadn’t noticed her.

She'd never seen them like that before, obviously, but it was still shocking to her all the same how they were together. She didn’t expect the way they moved together, the way they were vulnerable to each other. She would never have imagined Lauren to be such a confident lover; or that Bo could be so completely guardless - with anyone - the way she had been with her right then.

She joked with Bo afterwards that what she’d seen was so traumatic as to be seared into her brain until her dying day. It was just schtick though; really she just remembered particular details rather than a perfect Polaroid picture image. The succubus had been arched off the floor, one hand forced against the ground and the other seizing a heavy fist of blonde hair. Lauren’s surprisingly athletic figure curved over her deliberately. She was crooning something gentle and reassuring in Bo’s ear that was wholly at odds to the frantic energy of their bodies and the movements of toned muscles in her arm and shoulder.

She’d known they’d loved each other, of course - she’d been around to witness several incarnations of their relationship, in thick and thin. But there in front of her was a vivid proof that they were _in_ love – in how Bo’s fingertips slipped up Lauren’s body and Lauren’s mouth found her skin in return, in how tightly they clung to one another, to be just that little bit closer still.

They scrambled for some modesty the instant they noticed her, but she’d already seen plenty. Way too much, she’d later complained, frequently, and at length.

Bo was naturally shameless in her nakedness, so when she wrapped both their bodies up in the thick rug, it was mostly a gesture of chivalry on Lauren’s behalf. In all the years they’d lived together, Kenzi had learned very well that _embarrassment_ was an abstract concept to Bo, so she sure as hell wasn't saving her own blushes.

How the fuck had things gone so wrong, Kenzi wondered. How could somebody, who seemed so vital and alive, be cut down so cheaply? And how could somebody, who was so gentle and so full of love, become what Ysabeau was?

She sighed, and left her memories of the lovers to each other sad and subdued.

The thick carpet ended raggedly onto fine white marble. This was definitely new, but it was different to Ysabeau’s other additions. The room was squared around a kind of glass altar; the sole decoration to be seen was the elegant silverwork panels forming its base.

If there was madness here, it wasn’t obvious; every line and plane was perfect and symmetrical. It gave the impression of a place sacred to somebody, and even if that _somebody_ was out of her mind, Kenzi found herself stepping as lightly as she might in church just the same.

Up close, she realised her first impression was wrong - it wasn’t actually an altar, although it had been finely wrought to resemble one. The twists of the silver filigree concealed tubes, cables and machinery, and what had appeared to be a single, glass block was actually a perspex bubble.

She got close enough to see inside, and stifled a cry of horror. No, it wasn’t an altar – it was a sarcophagus.

It was Lauren.


	4. Chapter 4

Kenzi had attended more than her share of funerals and wakes over the years. One of the things she'd come to resent most about the whole ritual was the small talk. It was unbearable, inevitable bullshit. Some dumbass would talk about how peaceful the stiff looked, and then other dumbasses chime in to tell each other how much it looked like they were just _sleeping_. 

It was always bullshit though – no matter how skilled the work, the truth was, you could always tell, or at least she could. The makeup was always too thick, the complexion was always too waxy. They were always too perfect, too posed, too carefully staged to look comfortable or alive.

Because they weren’t sleeping - they were dead.

But this, this was something else. God knows what technology or magic or combo of the two Ysabeau used to achieve this , because it was almost flawless. Lauren’s thick blonde hair fanned out naturally on the silk cushioning; she wore no jewellery, and her skin had neither the distinctive pallor of a corpse or that telltale undertaker sheen. Ysabeau had presumably her dressed - beautifully - and artfully laid out, but it didn’t seem like she’d been embalmed at all. It was more like something Kenzi remembered from old sci fi space movies or a fairy tale – she looked like she could take a breath any moment, open her eyes and just sit up.

Only one thing gave the trick away. There, in the clear skin between her chest and her shoulder, was the bullet hole. The big full stop, the root of all evils, the evil mirror image of Ysabeau’s own scar. It looked much smaller than she remembered, but then the blood had all been cleaned away, leaving only the mouth of the wreckage visible. Strange to think that such a tidy little wound could be the end of so much.And of course, Lauren been hit from the front, so the exit wound from her back was where the real damage would have been.

She was surprised, in these pristine surroundings, to see how grimy the dome itself actually was. Her hand unconsciously reached out to touch, and made the connection - fingerprints, of course. Ysabeau’s fingerprints, as her hands rested on the glass.

Kenzi hadn’t actually been there when it happened. The alarm wasn’t raised right away, and when they broke down the door hours later, Bo was still clinging to the body, only a few feet away from the assassin’s broken corpse.

Bo had been practically catatonic - the fury, Ysabeau, only took hold later. All Kenzi remembered seeing when the door came down was blood, everywhere, she’d never forget it. A storied veteran of funerals and wakes like Kenzi had the misfortune to know what that meant. That much blood meant it hadn’t been quick. Lauren’s heart had fought to beat, even as it pumped her life right out of her; her body had fought to live long after the fatal injury had already landed. She'd died slow and hard and Bo had watched, heard and _felt_ her do it all the way.

Kenzi never had a chance to ask how long it had taken, or what had happened, if there were any last words or anything. She never really had a chance to mourn, either. For all that had gone between them, Lauren _had_ been her friend, and ally. And even if she hadn’t been, she hadn’t deserved that, nobody did. She and Bo were supposed to have their happy ending. Hadn’t they’d earned it, for God’s sake?

Ysabeau must have had the sarcophagus constructed almost immediately, given how perfect the body was. And yes, peaceful. Kenzi had rarely seen this woman so serene in life, and felt a a pang of guilt about that.

She took a few moments to say some quiet words, to herself and to Lauren, and rounded the sarcophagus to continue on.

She was surprised again. Lying on the floor of this pristine crypt was a miserable little pile of fabric, a thin blanket, and a pillow. This then, was where the most powerful figure in the world slept, on the marble floor of her lover’s tomb.

Kenzi shook her head and walked on. She didn't want to look at it. She didn't want to look long enough to find a battered old Yale shirt buried in there somewhere too.


	5. Chapter 5

She hoped she was getting close to the end of the rabbit hole.

It made sense - Ysabeau would surely have buried a room so important to her right in the heart of her strange little den, so wherever she’d made her little nest, it wouldn’t have been far.

She stepped into a vast, plushly appointed room and congratulated her instincts. Bo’s old bedroom, of course.

She expected to see more shades here, more ghosts of memories past - this room was one of the first they’d made livable, and it would have been where Bo and Lauren had made most of their memories together.

But there were none. And actually, Kenzi now realised, she hadn’t actually seen any shadows of _Lauren_ at all, the whole way here. Only herself and Bo. And at some point on her way here, the strange heat shimmer effect must have started fading too. Perhaps the magic was waning, or going somewhere else… or something. She didn’t know. It didn’t feel that important really – she could sense she was only really here for the ride. Something much bigger than her was already in motion, and wouldn’t be stopped whether she was witness to it or not.

This room - of all the ones she’d seen and passed through - was the one that seemed most “alive” in the whole cadaver of a building. The bed hadn’t been slept in for a while - and she already knew why from the sad little bundle of bedclothes in the altar room - but otherwise, the room seemed to have seen the most use. Ysabeau must have been feeding from prisoners on one of the lower floors or something, because it definitely hadn’t been happening here. The room wasn’t as orderly as the lab, but it wasn’t nearly as chaotic as the corridors before either. It was pretty much as she remembered it, but for the addition of a bunch of drawings, painting and ceramics she was pretty sure she remembered from Lauren’s old place.

“Thought I heard her.” Ysabeau said, quietly and Kenzi turned with a start.

She was sitting against the bed, looking tired and defeated, and if it weren't for the fact that her eyes still burned blue, Kenzi might really have believed she was looking at Bo.

“Could have sworn I did.”

She shook her head, with a grim sneer.

“Must be getting crazier in my old age.”

She looked up, as if noticing Kenzi for the first time.

”Do you dream about him Kenz? 'Bout Hale?”

“Sometimes. Yeah.” Kenzi answered; honestly, and unsure why.

Ysabeau nodded.

“That’s something, at least. I don’t dream at all, anymore. I mean I… see things, but that’s not the same. I don’t dream about her. Can’t seem feel anything at all without her, tell you the truth.”

Ysabeau regarded her quizzically.

“You saw them in the halls…? The ghosts?” she said, half a statement.

Kenzi looked back to her.

“Yeah, I guess. Saw 'em the whole way here. Are they always doing that? Just the same shit over and over.”

Ysabeau nodded slowly, taking this in.

“Usually, it’s just me who can see them. You… ripped the seams of something with that knife, whatever it is. Everything’s… open. What the hell is it, where the hell do you get something that can do this?”

Kenzi shook her head vaguely.

“Hell if I know what it is. Some weird guy gave it to us, told us to use it. He was a sage, we figured it was worth a shot

She shrugged.

“Huh,” Ysabeau said, looking mildly impressed. “I really thought I’d got all of them.”

She regarded her injured arm distractedly.

“Was a hell of a shot, Kenz, I gotta give you that. It’s drying up now though, whatever you started. I’ve got a feel for that stuff these days.”

Ysabeau looked her over, and that monstrous, tyrant ferocity returned in a second.

“I can feel something big starting to end, too. You feel it? I don’t know if you can.”

She got to her feet.

“I’m _tired_ Kenzi. Let’s just finish this.”

Ysabeau already had her by the throat before she could answer.

“It won’t hurt,” she lulled, close enough that Kenzi could feel her breath as she spoke. “I’ll give you that for old time’s sake.”

Her blue eyes sparked and Kenzi felt it start to happen, the unmistakable pull of chi from her body.

And it was true – it didn’t hurt. More than that - it didn’t hurt, it was _sublime._ Oh God. Her whole body, oh God, she could feel it in her whole body. She’d never realised how much she –

“Bo, stop” came a simple, certain instruction into the room like a rifle’s shot.

The pull cut short abruptly, and Kenzi heard herself let a cheated little whimper. Even half-thralled, she still recognised that voice instantly, and she disbelieved it just as certainly.

Lauren, that was Lauren’s voice. It was impossible, even in this strange place in these strange days, but it was Lauren.

Kenzi felt herself slip free of Bo’s grasp and slumped gracelessly against the bed, with her head rolling drunkenly on her shoulders, her skin flushed and hot, so sure she must have imagined what she thought she’d heard.

But no. She was looking right at her. There was nothing ethereal or illusory about her. This wasn’t some spectre or phantom of Kenzi’s imagination, this wasn't some recording ghost. The ugly - and very real - gunshot wound through her chest attested to that.

Lauren stood in the room with an incongruous dignity, as though she had every right in the world to stride in and assert herself.

Ysabeau stood rooted to the spot, staring at her in mute horror.

Kenzi thought she might have seen Lauren’s dark eyes flick over her in recognition for just a second, but couldn’t be sure.

“Bo. Oh Bo.”

Ysabeau stared at her, nervously. For the first time Kenzi could remember, something like doubt was clouding her features.

“You… were gone,” Ysabeau said, as though accused.

“Bo” Lauren started, patiently. “You know this wasn’t how it was supposed to be.” 

 “I know. _I know!_  But they couldn’t understand! You were supposed to be here. I needed you!”

Lauren moved towards her.

“I know, Bo, I know. I’m so sorry. You know I would never have chosen that.”

She put her arms around Ysabeau, and Kenzi saw the Queen crumble against her.

“I would never have left you alone Bo, I’m so sorry.” she said. “But I’m here for you now.”

“We were supposed to set it all right, Lauren. It’s what we were meant for. But you weren’t here! They took you away, and it all got screwed up.”

Lauren shook her head gently.

“They weren't ready yet… but I would never have wanted this.”

“But _you_ weren’t _here_ ,” she said again. “I couldn’t… it wasn’t how it was supposed to be. And I couldn’t... see anything straight Lauren. I couldn’t feel anything the way I was meant to, when you were gone.”

“Bo, I know. You just got so lost. But it wasn’t all your fault, you shouldn’t have tried to use the blood to bring me back. Didn’t you realise it was eating you up?”

Bo frowned.

“I can’t fix this, can I Lauren?” she said, looking up at her with brown eyes. “There’s no making it right, I'm too far gone. And this, all of it's gone too far.”

Lauren shook her head kindly.

“No, Bo, I’m sorry. There’s no making this right. It wasn’t your fault, not all of it, I know. There’s no coming back from this.”

Bo absorbed this, and seemed to accept it.

"So what happens now?” she said softly, and looked up to Lauren expectantly.

“Oh Bo, my love. We’ll just have to start over,” Lauren said patiently, and Kenzi’s head started to swim again. “And try again next time. Maybe it will be next time.”

Kenzi lolled back against something. She thought she saw a flash of metal in Lauren’s hand from the corner of her eye. A knife?

Bo’s own knife. Bo saw it in her hand, and her only expression was relief.

“I’m so tired, Lauren.”

She nodded kindly.

“I know, Bo. I know. You can put it all down soon.”

“How do I know I can find you again? Next time?”

Lauren smiled and stroked Bo’s face tenderly.

“We'll always find each other. A little sooner every time, and we are going to keep doing it until we make it. It’s what we’re meant to do, it’s _destiny_ , right?”

Bo laughed sadly.

“Yeah well I’ve heard a lot of big talk about destiny that didn’t deliver.”

Lauren chuckled gently herself.

“This is different.”

Were Kenzi’s eyes playing tricks on her again, or could she see fresh blood from the ruined pit in Lauren’s chest, running down into the fabric of her burial dress?

“Why?”

“Because we’re going to make it happen, aren’t we? You and I. We’ll make a balance, for once and for all, next time. Light, dark, fae, human, brave new world, etcetera, etcetera, right?”

Bo nodded. Blood was streaming freely, endlessly from Lauren’s wound.

“What will happen everybody else…? I’ve done so much damage… I couldn't feel it.”

“Not you, Bo. Not all of you. You didn’t do that. But the big bad Ysabeau will be defeated by the brave little human girl who marched into the lion's den, and human and fae alike will rejoice.”

Bo laughed.

“She’ll be okay?”

“She’s the dragonslayer." Lauren smiled. "She’ll be a hero.”

Bo nodded thoughtfully.

“So I’ve been the dragon. That’s all I’ve managed to be, I just destroyed.”

“That wasn’t all your fault. They were afraid, they didn’t know, they weren’t ready. But for all we know, maybe this was all necessary. Maybe next time, after what Kenzi will do, after what she'll tell them, maybe that will be the difference. Maybe next time is the time we close the distance and break the cycle.”

Bo took a deep breath and tried to compose herself a little.

“Next time?”

Lauren smiled, and brushed away a tear.

“Next time. Or the time after that. We got so close run, didn’t we? We almost made it.”

"We really did." she agreed, and for the first time Kenzi started realising just how far beyond her comprehension this thing might really be.

Bo took another deep breath, looked deep into Lauren’s eyes, and nodded.

Lauren’s strike came so quickly that Kenzi didn’t recognise it for what it was right away.

There was a second of absolute stillness; and then Bo made an ugly gulping sound. Lauren dropped the knife and caught her in her arms as she fell, gently lowering them both to ground. Bo made that pained, wet gulp again, and reached for Lauren’s bloody hand. Lauren took and held Bo’s hand tightly, soothing and comforting her as she bled freely onto the ground.

“It won’t hurt much longer” she said. “It won’t hurt much longer.”

There’s so much blood, Kenzi thought. There’s so much blood. Her head was so muddled.

The room drifted far off down a black tunnel. The last thing she heard was Lauren’s murmured solace, and saw Bo, trying very hard not to press a hand to the wound, trying not to struggle for her life, trying to keep telling her she loved her as many more times as she could.


	6. Chapter 6

When Dyson found Kenzi, she was alone, lying unconscious on the deep red carpet of the throne room.

Ysabeau lay dead at the foot of her own throne. Her hand was clasped rigidly on the ring she wore around her neck, and a little wooden knife had been driven into her gut so hard that the wood itself had cracked. The parchment from the handle must have been lost in the fight, and Dyson noticed, for the first time, a symbol inlaid on the grip. It looked to him like an Ouroboros, a snake eating its own tail.The thin metal must have split right along with the wood, cracking the sigil in half. He didn't know if that was important. He wasn’t one for all that magic shit at all, really. However it worked, it had worked, and that was enough for him.

Kenzi never told him exactly what happened. She wasn’t sure she even could. Instead, she lead him as best she could down the bewildering corridors beyond the throne room. In a white marble room, in a silver and glass sarcophagus, they found the body of Lauren Lewis, sealed and pristine as it had been for years and years now. She was wearing a simple, silver ring.

 

 

The End.

 

Thanks for reading.


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